This Will Be Funny Later

20 weeks, wow! It’s been a week full of rain and snuggles. Not many new skills.

– Slept on her stomach at night for the first time. Technically it’s a bit early. She isn’t rolling reliably. But she has no trouble lifting her head and moving it from side to side, and she cried when I put her down on her back. I rolled her over and bam, asleep. So I decided to give it a go. Which led to her next accomplishment:

– Slept 5 hours in a row. Just one hour short of that amazing “sleeping through the night” of which parents speak.

– Not really a milestone, but she has taken to flailing her limbs wildly when she sees me, with a huge smile on her face. It is beyond precious.

– She also loves watching Dad as he moves around the room.

– Also, this has been happening for a while, but I think I’ve forgotten to mention it. She’s fascinated with screens. This week, she is even fascinated with them when they’re off. I used to be able to distract her from my phone or ipad simply by turning the offending device off, but not this week. She knows what they are, and she wants them!

– First day home all day with just dad! They both did great.

I am so thankful for every sweet moment with her. For my sweet, beautiful, healthy little baby girl. I didn’t know that motherhood would be made of this. I thought it would be full of first steps and exciting changes, but it’s not. It’s about the little moments every day that gradually accrete into the deepest bond I’ve ever felt with another human being. It’s about learning each other and enjoying just being together. She gets excited when we head to the bedroom to nurse, and my breasts start dripping too. She smiles like I’m made of sunshine when she sees me, and I know I do the same when I see her. The smells and sounds and feelings of just cuddling with her make me feel complete.

Motherhood isn’t all big dramatic moments. It’s being home base, being safety and comfort and joy to someone just learning about the world. It’s treasuring one small moment at a time. It’s amazing.

Edit: ps. And mom, you’re still home base to me 🙂

– Rolled over by herself, both back to front and front to back! Front to back is more popular, with 5 rolls so far compared to one.

– Slept 5 hours straight. Sleeping through the night is so tantalizingly close!

– First restaurant excursion! She was extremely good. She did manage to pee all over everything she was wearing while on the awkwardly located changing table (it blocked 2/3 stalls in a busy bathroom), necessitating a complete outfit change. That only sucked because she was afraid of the hand dryer so she cried every time someone dried their hands. Also the people waiting for me and my naked crying daughter to get out of the way. Otherwise she didn’t cry or make a scene at all! She was very pleasant for 4 hours in public without eating or sleeping. It was nice to catch up with my uncle, aunt, and cousin.

– Reaching for food? I couldn’t tell if she was reaching for my strawberries because they were red, or because they were food. She is, however:

– Watching mom eat. Avidly.

Things are moving so fast! I swear it was just last week that I found that disgusting, shriveled up little bit of cord in the toe of her sleeper. I remember telling myself it would get better when she smiled at me and that surely it would be any day. Today, she’s smiling and cooing and nursing like a champ. (And yes, those first few rare smiles made life more bearable). I feel like I can’t even track how fast she’s changing, so I’m going to try a new experiment: Milestone Monday.

Obviously she doesn’t reach a new milestone every week, but the alliteration was too good to pass up. So maybe I can start posting what’s new every Monday? We will see how it goes.

This week, she started lifting up her feet one at a time while standing (standing with help). Twice on Saturday, she “walked” over to Fee line this! It was very exciting for everyone.

During tummy time, she has finally started smiling. She also almost has the hang of rolling over, but she plants her hands a little too wide.

She fusses now if you lie her on her back. She can’t quite sit or stand on her own, which means she’s a lot of work! But that’s ok. It’s adorable.

She grabs for things in the book during bedtime story.

When she blows raspberries, it’s to express annoyance or frustration. This girl is ready to take on the world!

That’s all I can think of for this week.

8/15/2013
You are a melody,
sailing high and sweet into this world
fresh and pure like the flutists solo.
I, your harmony
enfolding you in the thrumming joy
of my love for you.

Counterpoints we have known
and falters in our rhythm
but the metronome beat
of our hearts
has always aligned.

The tune is ever changing
we will swirl closer
then further
but always return
to each other.

You have made me sing
a song of love deeper
than any I have ever known.

Saturday night, Jet had a lot of trouble sleeping because she was both very congested and gassy. Sunday morning, she threw up all over me, and soon after had a round of diarrhea. This was enough to convince me to take her temperature (100.2), which was enough to convince me to call the nurse line, who told me to come in. So we saw the doctor, who said it was probably just a virus and we just needed to keep an eye on the fever, make sure she had enough wet diapers, and use saline drops in her nose. Call if the fever hits 100.4. Hooray no antibiotics!

So I took my fussy little munchkin home and put saline in her nose and let her sleep on me instead of in her crib. She had a good nap and was mostly back to her sunny little self. A little quicker to cry when she needed something, but otherwise acting fine. At 8pm, her fever hit 100.4. I wouldn’t say I freaked out, but I definitely called the nurse line without hesitation. Finally our choice of pediatrician has paid off! They said to call back if it goes to100.5, but that100.4 was still okay, and to let her sleep rather than wake her for rectal temps. So I called in to work and called her in from school, and put her to bed.

Through the night her temp stayed down, and this morning (Monday) she was back below 99 and while congested and clingy, otherwise acting totally normal.

Tomorrow she goes back to school, barring another fever tonight. In short, this has been the easiest and least scary first time my child got sick I could have hoped for. Yay!

So I’m not the best mommyblogger out there. It’s okay. I don’t make money on it and I never will. It’s been a long time since I posted, which seems to be kind of how I do things. I’m hoping to write my birth story soon, before it fades any further from my memory. Parts of it are etched there forever but other parts are already foggy.

Last night I wrote a poem during our 3am nursing session. It still needs some polishing. So instead, here’s a poem I wrote on 6/9/2013, when my daughter was just 2.5 weeks old. At the time we were still struggling with breastfeeding, and sleeping on the couch with her on my chest. Those nights were hard and my whole body was hurting from motherhood, but even then my heart was expanding like the big bang had gone off inside me. There’s no other way to hold on to so much love as I have now other than to have my whole world shift and churn and grow to accommodate it. I was terrified every moment for this fragile new life I held in my arms 24 hours a day. I digress. To the (possibly mediocre, I could never judge my own writing) poetry with bad spacing because I can’t figure out how to have a single carriage return:

Cherish

Well, here we are at 28 weeks! Time is flying by. In some ways I feel like I only found out I was pregnant yesterday (usually when I think about how long I have before the baby is here), but sometimes it feels like I’ve been pregnant forever (pondering sushi, beer, etc). It seems like I am exponentially more pregnant every day, as the little things get harder and harder to do. The upside is that I can feel the baby more and more. I can tell the difference between when she’s stretching and when she’s just kicking and when she’s rolling over. I can even feel this tickly little feeling that I swear is her moving her fingers around, as if her hand is stuck between her head and my uterine wall, and she’s clenching and unclenching her hand.

Whenever I feel her move, it brings me so much joy and comfort. Thankfully I’ve remained on a pretty even emotional keel throughout this pregnancy, but even during one of my rare crying jags, feeling her move has calmed me down and made me feel like I could do it. It’s hard to comprehend how much I already love this little person I’ve never met. I always knew that parenthood changes people, but it happens so fast! I’m already changing so much. F. isn’t changing as much as I am. In part I’m sure it’s hormonal, but in part I also think it’s that I’m constantly reminded that I’m pregnant and that she’s here, whereas his day-to-day is basically unchanged. He can go to work and sit down in his usual chair and get in to his usual routine. He comes home and does much the same, except that night I snore now, and sometimes he has to ask me to roll over. On the other hand, my entire routine is disrupted with making sure I get enough water, taking bathroom trips. There’s heartburn and nausea and all the less pleasant side effects of pregnancy. But mostly, there’s the life moving inside of me. She wakes me up at night sometimes. She distracts me during meetings. She wakes up and starts moving when I eat a meal, takes advantage of when I’m sitting down to stretch (not as much as usual in the last few weeks!), squirms when I try to lean over too much and squish my belly. How can I not change when this is happening?

I was so relieved when I hit the point in the pregnancy at which she would have a chance to survive outside the womb. Not a great one, but a chance. I’d been so afraid for her, for her safety. I was afraid something would happen and I’d lose her and there’d be nothing even modern medicine could do. And then I realized that this is part of parenthood. I’m not afraid of that particular thing going wrong anymore, but I’m still just… worried about her and her well-being. I want to protect her from getting hurt. This fear is different from how I feel about my pets. I love them dearly and I want to protect them too, and we spend lots of money on vets and medications and whatnot. But in some ways, they’re grown beings, with lifespans I’ve always known are shorter than mine. This fear, that something I won’t be able to fix for her, is something else. Something new and enormous. And part of being a parent. It will never go away. It will ebb and flow, and sometimes I’ll have to just hold her while she hurts because there’s nothing else I can do. (Sorry Mom and Dad for being such a klutzy and injury-prone kid. I had no idea.)

This enormous new kind of love is huge, and I’ll already never be the same again.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jj-keith/new-moms_b_1850227.html

Rambling post ahead…

So I’ve been sick this week. Which sucks, since it turns out I might be one of those women that goes overboard with being careful about what they put in their bodies when pregnant. Might be? Scratch that. I’m erring on the side of caution, which is easily confused with being totally insane about this. But anyway, that means I haven’t been taking anything for this sinus infection/cold that I have, so every symptom seems a hundred times worse (I take that back… I took a Tylenol Saturday afternoon, when it hurt so much to swallow that I was getting really dehydrated). I’ve basically just been sleeping, taking hot showers, and drinking a lot of hot water. It seemed to be working, at least until yesterday when I fasted for 10 hours then had a blood glucose tolerance test. That pretty much wiped out my day and my energy, and I woke up feeling worse again this morning. The good news is, I apparently tolerate glucose as well as I ever did, and there is no sign of gestational diabetes. (Also my iron count looks “fantastic,” thank you kale!)

So anyway. I was out sick from work on Monday, then doing the glucose thing yesterday, then out sick again today. Turns out that if I don’t go back tomorrow (which I won’t, because I have a final and a midterm and the appointment where my adviser says I can graduate for real) I need a doctor’s note. Well, both my husband and my mom have been telling me to go to a doctor anyway, so this morning I scheduled a same-day to go in and see someone and ask for a note. I guess I’ve been spoiled by my previous jobs… I haven’t needed a doctor’s note in ages (of course, I also can’t remember the last time I needed 4 consecutive days off for anything other than a badass family vacation). So I headed in, and started to check in when I realized that I haven’t updated my insurance since I changed jobs. Almost a year ago. Because I never go to the doctor. Where did my aversion to going to the doctor come from, anyway?

So I got called in and sat down on the awkwardly high, loud, crinkly examining table, and the nurse asked me a few questions and then said, “So what’s going on?” They always ask that. Even if you’re clutching an obviously damaged body part which is gushing blood, they want to know what brings you in today. Because they didn’t ask when you made the appointment, or when you checked in. Or I guess maybe my cold may have transmogrified into a stomach ailment? But for once it was nice, because I was petrified of asking for a note. I think my response to the nurse was something like this: “IhaveacoldanditsnothatbadanymorebutnowIneedanoteforwork!” Fortunately this is as common a request as my husband insisted it would be, and she dutifully wrote down what I said, and then said the doctor would be in shortly. Amazingly, the doctor was in very shortly! And started asking me about how I was feeling and looking at my nose/ears/etc. She asked if I was prone to sinus issues and I said I was prone to sinus issues and allergies both, and that I was avoiding allergy meds because I was pregnant. I kind of slipped that in there because no one had asked, and I wanted to make sure she knew that before writing any prescriptions. So she suggested some pregnancy-safe medications, and said if I got worse, feel free to call back and she’d call in a prescription for me.

And then she said I should pop out and start showing soon. In a very nice, friendly, hooray you’re pregnant kind of a way. But good lord, I’m 27 weeks in! I’m basically 2/3 of the way there! Just the other night I was complaining to F that at this point in the game, I wished I was showing more. He made the (very valid) point that soon enough I will probably be huge and really uncomfortable, so I might as well enjoy it. But it still really sucks to still look basically like I’ve put on a few pounds rather than like there is a BABY INSIDE ME A REAL LIVE BABY and it’s INSIDE ME. And yes, I still find that incredibly weird. I think it’s safe to say at this point that I will find it weird up until the point that it is no longer true.

And as soon as I connect my camera, I will prove that I am showing. Even if it’s only when I wear yoga clothing. And maybe stick out my stomach a little.